


Prodigal Son

by foundCarcosa



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that the war is over, the sins of the fallen weigh heaviest. [Written 20 April 2011]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prodigal Son

The snow muffled Ludwig’s shambling footsteps, but he could still hear heavy boots trampling asphalt with an unbreakable cadence. His blood no longer stained the pristine whiteness, but he still heard the wet splatter as his wounds dripped, untended. Untended because Gilbert’s were much worse.

The war was over, or so the headlines screamed. Ludwig, however, had the feeling that it wouldn’t be over for him for a long time yet.

His breath hitched as he shuffled, his leg still not completely healed; the wrapped head wound throbbed with every faltering step. The empty road seemed endless, but when he forced his head up, he could see the towering Gothic spires as they loomed ever closer.

 _“God? We don’t need one of those. We have done fine thus far without one.”_  
Ever the pragmatist, ever Gilbert’s solemn protégè, he’d rejected religion as a crutch. He needed not clutch any crucifix, or cry to any intangible being. He was not Arthur, with his fanciful notions and imagined sorcery. When Germany won, Germany won by its own strength, its own cunning.

But when Germany lost, Germany forgot its haughty spirit.

 _“Still going on about this ‘God’, then? Your God must be no better than the rest of us, if he allowed someone like the Führer to live…!”_  
Smug rejected turned to outright hatred of the notion when Ludwig’s recently-deceased boss took his blood-stained throne. Feliciano flinched away from these hastily-flung verbal barbs every time, a caul descending over his expressive eyes as he turned his back to the German.

And for a while, it seemed the godless just might inherit the earth…

The heavy cathedral doors rattled as Ludwig slammed his fists against them; he stumbled away when they creaked and gave, swinging opening with the momentum. The sanctuary within was dusty and unlit, the outlines of pews stretching as far as his bleary eyes could see.

His shambling was loud here, and he felt the eyes of the saints in the stained glass window as he painstakingly made his way up the aisle. His chest grew tight, his wheezing breaths sounding asthmatic in the stillness.

He was hallucinating again, blood spatters appearing on the floor in front of him like a trail of bread crumbs; a severed hand there clutched tattered string, from which dangled a silver Star of David. The fingers twitched, and Ludwig choked.

They said he’d hallucinate like this only until the head-wound healed.  
Ludwig was sure that was a much more hopeful prognosis than the likely reality.

The toe of his boot banged into the raised dais, and trembling hands shot out to keep him from falling. Drained of dignity, he crawled, until he could touch the dingy white cloth covering the altar. He imagined it burned him, and he snatched his hand back.

A couple of shuddering breaths, and he parted cracked lips to speak. No words came at first, just a weary half-sob.

But when the words did come, they came like the Great Flood.

“I… I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know… I don’t know any prayers, I never learned them… Feliciano would say them and I didn’t listen… I don’t even know why I’m here but… this is… this is one of the last… the last buildings left intact…

“I know I mocked… y-you… you in the past. So I don’t know if you’ll even hear me now. But Feliciano says you… you’ll listen anyway. If I mean what I say.

“I didn’t want any of this. I wanted to win,  _ja_ , we all want to win, but this… this is the worst of losses, this is not losing a war, this is losing my life, everything I stood for, everything I cared about… I don’t know who I am anymore and I’ve done so much harm and I… I’m sorry,  _Ich will nur mein_ _Bruder, und mein Italien, und es tut mir leid, es tut mir leid, es tut mir leid_ …”

At some point during Ludwig’s barely-articulate babbling, Feliciano Vargas had wandered into the cathedral. If one had asked him, he would have inclined his head humbly and called it the will of his God that had led him down the snowy, deserted road and into the church. He should have been in Italy, after all, in his own war-torn nation… but he was here, in Ludwig’s. And he regretted nothing.

Ludwig felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder as he sobbed, and for a fleeting moment he thought it was some angel, some saint, some scion of God that had come to forgive him. The whispered words in Italian as the hand moved to smooth his unkempt hair only made him believe that he was correct.


End file.
